DUCTLESS GLANDS 539 



the proper elaboration of the body generally, or of the red particles more espe- 

 cially. . . . Indeed, not only had he found the anaemia in question occasionally 

 occurring in connection with purpura, but had observed in cases of the latter 

 disorder certain local symptoms which pointed somewhat significantly to the 

 supra-renal capsules; whilst the bloodless and waxy appearance of certain 

 chlorotic females bore so close a resemblance to the anaemia described, that it was 

 difficult not to suspect the existence of something common to both. 



In his monograph of 1855, after referring to " an ill-defined impres- 

 sion" that the suprarenals, in common with the spleen, thymus and 

 thyroid body, " in some way or other minister to the elaboration of the 

 blood," and after a modest reference to the "curious facts" upon 

 which he had "stumbled," Addison proceeds to develop the symptoms 

 of what is now called Addison's disease — anaemia, general langor and 

 debility, feeble heart action, irritable stomach, with a dingy or smoky 

 discoloration of the whole surface of the body, sometimes reaching a 

 deep amber or chestnut brown — and elucidates its pathology in eleven 

 cases, accompanied by striking and life-like colored plates. From these 

 records, it appears that the earliest known case of Addison's disease 

 was reported by his great colleague at Guy's, Richard Bright (of 

 Bright's disease) in 1829. In another, reported by Addison himself, 

 the post-mortem section was furnished "by my distinguished friend 

 Dr. Hodgkin" (of Hodgkin's disease). While developing his subject 

 with the firm hand of the master in descriptive pathology, Addison 

 draws no such striking conclusions in this memoir as we find in his 

 paper of 1849 or as are indicated in the preface to the memoir itself. 

 He does, however, draw attention to the important fact that even 

 malignant disease may exist in both capsules without giving rise to the 

 Addisonian discoloration of the skin. It was this memoir which led 

 Brown- Sequard to reproduce the fatal disease experimentally by excising 

 the suprarenal capsules in animals. The pouring out of the thyroidal 

 and adrenal secretions during surgical shock or under the passion of 

 fear (psychic shock) was emphasized long after by Crile and W. B. 

 Cannon. 



There remains one other affection which, on account of its present 

 importance, may be briefly considered before passing to the experimental 

 phases of the subject. The disease of acromegaly or gigantism was, as 

 we have said, regarded as an abnormity from the days of Goliath of 

 Gath up to the time of John Hunter's famous and expensive chase after 

 the skeleton of the Irish giant (1783), but even before this definite 

 cases had been reported, with good accounts of the deformities of the 

 bones and the periodic coma, by Saucerotte (1772) and Noel (1779), 

 and in the nineteenth century by Alibert (1822), Chalk (1857), by 

 Friedreich in the case of the two Hagner brothers (1868), by Lom- 

 broso (1868), and by Sir Samuel Wilks, who in 1869 made a strik- 

 ing notation of the disease. The accepted classical account is that of 



